Please answer Both of the following questions (#1 and #2). Your essays should reflect information
gleaned from your reading as well as class discussions. Your response to each question
should be between four and five pages, double-spaced
1) Essay One:
In 1980, a former SBC president said: “It’s
interesting to me at great political battles how you have a Protestant to pray
and a Catholic to pray and then you have a Jew to pray,… “With all due respect
to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a
Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus
Christ is not the true Messiah? It is blasphemy. It may be politically expedient,
but no one can pray unless he prays through the name of Jesus Christ.” How
would you respond to this claim that God does not hear the prayer of those who
do not pray in the name of Jesus? How would you describe the relationship
between God and contemporary Jewish people?
2) Essay Two: Select two (only 2)
of the following three statements and respond to the questions which follow
each:
A)
“The God of the Christian Bible and Allah are not
the same.” How would you respond to this
statement? What claims, scriptural and
theological, would be the basis for your response.
B)
“Christians can recognize Muhammad as a
prophet.” In your assessment, is this
statement true, false, or it depends?
How would you personally go about responding to this claim? What would be the advantages and
disadvantages of a widespread acceptance of this claim?
C)
“Islam has more in common with Judaism than with
Christianity.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Using your
knowledge of these three religious traditions, develop a response to this
claim, using specific historical and theological examples.
Religion
and Globalization,
by John Esposito, Darrell Fasching and Todd Lewis. Oxford University Press, 2008.
ISBN 9780195176957
Encountering
God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, by Diana Eck. Beacon Press, 1993, 2003. ISBN 978-0807073018
